Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Fred Armisen, Zach Galifianakis, Brian Posehn, Nick Swardson
What you missed out on: After Bob Odenkirk and David Cross decided to put a bullet in their HBO sketch comedy series, “Mr. Show” (that’s right, it was their decision, not the network’s), the guys attempted to go their separate ways, with Odenkirk setting up shop at Fox with a pilot for a new sketch comedy series. If you think the above names are impressive, consider that several other “Mr. Show” alumni were in tow as well, including Jerry Minor, Jay Johnston, and Jill Talley, with Patton Oswalt also participating in some capacity or other. And, yes, if you’re wondering, Cross made an appearance in the pilot, too. So what happened? Apparently, Fox basically flipped a coin to decide which new sketch comedy series they’d add to their lineup, and “Cedric the Entertainer Presents” won the toss. Oh, what might’ve been…

Starring: Jason Segel, Amy Poehler, Kevin Hart, and Judge Reinhold as himself
What you missed out on: Judd Apatow has never been ashamed to admit that the only reason that this pilot ever came into existence is that Fox refused to let him cast Jason Segel as his lead in the short-lived but highly-regarded “Undeclared,” but you can’t say he didn’t do his best to surround Segel with top-notch talent. Segel, Amy Poehler, and Kevin Hart played roommates, with Segel a struggling actor, Hart a struggling actor/comedian, and Poehler serving as Judge Reinhold’s personal assistant. There’s a more detailed look at the pilot here, but the long and the short of it is that, although Apatow admits that he really didn’t know if there was a decent series to be had in “North Hollywood,” he thinks the pilot’s pretty decent, but its tone didn’t match the sitcoms filling ABC’s lineup at the time, so they took a pass on it.

Starring: H. Jon Benjamin, Sarah Silverman, Todd Barry, Mitch Hedberg
What you missed out on: Created by Loren Bouchard, best known to animation fans as one of the creative forces behind “Home Movies,” “Saddle Rash” seemed to have all the elements necessary for a successful Adult Swim series, so why didn’t it make it beyond the pilot stage? Was it that westerns weren’t exactly in vogue at the time? Was there some sort of stigma attached to the project because they brought in country artists to continued voice work (including Waylon Jennings as a very special guest in the pilot)? Whatever the case, the pilot got aired – no doubt mostly because Adult Swim has a tendency to air just about every pilot it orders, whether it actually ends up going to series or not – but that was the end of the trail for the series.

Starring: Nathan Fillion, Leighton Meester, Moon Bloodgood, Geoff Stults, Rockmond Dunbar
What you missed out on: Director James Foley has got kind of a weird track record, having helmed “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Who’s That Girl,” “At Close Ranger,” and “The Corruptor,” but there’s enough good stuff in there to make you take note when he directs the pilot of a series. Yes, it was probably at heart just another cop drama, but there’s no denying that there was going to be plenty of talent in the squad room. There was, at least, a happy ending: series co-creator Barry Schindel went on to serve as a writer and executive producer on “Castle” a few years later. Guess he and Nathan Fillion got along.

Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Alyson Hannigan, Sara Gilbert, Ed O’Neil, Christine Baranski
What you missed out on: The premise of the series involved Hewitt playing a single-mom sports producer who ends up as highly successful on-air talent, but despite taking two stabs at a pilot, the show never gelled properly. On the other hand, while she was filming one of those pilots, the producers of “Ghost Whisperer” came by and pitched Hewitt their show, thereby providing her with an instant fallback position which she was more than glad to take when “In the Game” fell apart.

Starring: Peter Dinklage, Dave Foley, Busy Phillips, Tina Majorino
What you missed out on: Although I loved him on “Threshold,” I certainly couldn’t begrudge Peter Dinklage for moving onward when that show was canceled and taking a shot at headlining his own series. Given that it took place in a high school, the possibilities for “Testing Bob” would seem to have been endless, but it never got off the ground.

Starring: Paul Giamatti, David Hyde Pierce, Patton Oswalt, Molly Shannon
What you missed out on: Unlike the rest of these pilots, the one for this animated series actually received a DVD release, thereby showing the world at large just how completely bizarre it was. It’s not like anyone can possibly be surprised that even Sci-Fi thought the show was too kooky for mainstream audiences to ever embrace it, but at least we can take comfort in the fact that it’s built a small but loyal cult following over the years.

Starring: Heather Locklear, Illeana Douglas, Peri Gilpin, Brittany Robertson
What you missed out on: Several years before Scott Bakula, Ray Romano, and Andre Braugher offered up their TNT series, the opposing gender had already made an attempt at getting on the air under a suspiciously familiar title. It would’ve been nice to see Gilpin somewhere other than ABC Family’s “Make It or Break It,” but it was not to be.

Starring: Paul Reubens, Jane Lynch, Bruce McGill, Matthew Lillard
What you missed out on: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to guess the premise of this sitcom: it was intended to show all the shenanigans that go on inside the top-secret government base reputed to be the home of alien lifeforms. Did we say “reputed”? Given that Paul Reubens was credited on IMDb as “The Alien,” maybe it’s not so reputed after all.

Starring: Joseph Fiennes, Blythe Danner, Robert Wagner, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jonathan Groff
What you missed out on: Nowadays, you’d be hard pressed to find a network that would take a pass on anything with Ryan Murphy’s name attached to it, but in his pre-”Glee” days, Murphy was mostly still viewed as “that weird ‘Nip/Tuck’ guy,” and this series – about a married man with two sons who has to tell his family that he’s a transsexual – probably didn’t do much for that particular reputation. Probably the only surprising thing about the non-pickup for “Pretty/Handsome” is that the network that turned it down was the same one that put “Nip/Tuck” on the air in the first place. Presumably there were no hard feelings between Murphy and FX, though, given that it remains the home of his “American Horror Story.”

Starring: Catherine O’Hara, Mae Whitman, DJ Qualls, Gary Cole, Jeffrey Tambor, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Treat Williams, Marilu Henner
What you missed out on: Based on the New Zealand series “Outrageous Fortune,” “Good Behavior” would have followed the life of a family of criminals who decide to live life on the straight and narrow after their father ends up behind bars. If the premise sounds familiar, it’s because it ended up being revisited a few years later as “Scoundrels,” which only lasted eight episodes. You’d like to think that “Good Behavior” would’ve lasted longer.

Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nate Corrdry, Molly Parker, Adam Scott
What you missed out on: Although HBO is known for putting some seriously great series on the air, they’re pretty picky about what makes the final cut. For instance, this show about three siblings – played by Gellar, Corrdry, and Parker – adapting to life after the death of their parents, never saw the light of day. On the other hand, though, if it had, then Scott (who played Gellar’s ex-boyfriend) wouldn’t have been available for “Party Down,” so it all worked out in the end.

Starring: David Tennant, Jerry O’Connell, Abigail Spencer, Jane Curtin, Jeffrey Tambor
What you missed out on: In the waning days of his stint on “Doctor Who,” David Tennant decided to expand his horizons and make a break for American television, headlining an NBC series about an attorney who, due to his recurring panic attacks, starts coaching his clients to defend themselves in court…or something like that, anyway. Tennant put on his best American accent – you’ve got to have one if Jane Curtin’s going to play your mother, haven’t you? – and teamed up with a solid supporting cast, but although NBC kept it in play for a decent while, the series never made the schedule.

SPOILER WARNING: All events that have occurred in the TV show are fair game. I have read the books but I will not go any further beyond small hints that only fellow book-readers will catch on to. You’ve been warned.

Note: Because it can be hard to keep all the names and faces straight, the first mention of each character contains a link to a picture of them which will open in a new tab.

Things were different this season. There really was no “Ned,” a central character for the viewer to grab on to, and as such, there really wasn’t a central story arc for us to stash all our hopes and dreams in (only to have them crushed, or, you know, sliced off).

Sure, the beginning of last season was confusing. We all know that every time we recommend ”Game of Thrones” to a friend, it’s with the caveat that they’re going to have to fight through the cacophony of misunderstanding that is the first few episodes. All these issues we’re amplified in Season Two, when not only do we have a bucket load of characters (the largest cast on television), but all in different places. Seriously, name a location other than King’s Landing where more than two major characters reside. It can’t be done. And as if that wasn’t enough, the show decided (well, needed) to throw even more characters and locations at us.

It certainly makes for a manageable format for blog posts, but in different hands, the second season of “Game of Thrones” could have been a catastrophic failure. So let’s get a round of applause for showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, and of course, the cast, namely Peter Dinklage and Alfie Allen, who are headed for Emmy nominations or my name’s Aloysius, and it’s not. I mean that sincerely; whether you’re in a cubicle or your living room wearing your polka dot boxers, I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, stick your head out and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I can’t go another year without ‘Game of Thrones‘!”

Think of how ballsy it is, when upwards of ten locations could be present in any given show, to have an entire episode devoted to just one (“Blackwater”), leaving the finale to somehow wrap up every other story line. Amazingly, “Game of Thrones” was able to do it, everything else it had to, and so much more. Now, back to that manageable blog post format, where I’ll discuss the three best (or my three favorite) character and thematic developments of the season.

Arya the Ruthless, Tywin the Old Softy

Out of necessity, Season Two diverged from the books a great deal more than the first season did. Some changes couldn’t be helped, and a slight few were questionable, but most breathed new life into the source material. Perhaps the best and brightest example of this is Arya serving as a cupbearer for Lord Tywin rather than Roose Bolton, one of her brother Robb’s bannermen.

I could get into the complicated scenario by which Arya comes to serve in a Bolton-occupied Harrenhal, but what you need to know is this: while the specifics were changed, the general theme and atmosphere of the arc remained the same, and condensing the scene meant interactions between the fantastic-despite-her-age Maisie Williams and old pro Charles Dance. But more important was the interaction between the two characters, which showed us two things: Arya’s continued growth into a cold killer fending for herself, and a softer side of the impossibly thick-skinned Tywin Lannister.

The line was altered for the show, but in “A Game of Thrones,” Ned tells Arya, “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” Winter is coming, but Arya has been forced to watch as her pack has been taken from her one by one. She is the lone wolf, and if she hopes to survive she must grow up fast.

As of yet, that hasn’t been a problem. In episode five, “The Ghost of Harrenhal,” Tywin caught her in a lie. Arya claimed she was Maidenpool, but knowing she’s a Northerner, he asks where she’s really from, and Arya’s got the stones to follow it up with another lie. Then she looks him right in the eye and tells him she doesn’t believe Robb can’t be killed, as some in the North believe, because “anyone can be killed.” The subtext here is “even you.” She doesn’t even blink.

We also saw Arya grow from a mouse in a cage whispering names to an assassin, or having an assassin at her disposal at least. Jaqen grants her the greatest power there is in the world of “Game of Thrones,” the power of life and death. She uses her first kill to avenge all those the Tickler tortured, and the second to save her own skin. In perhaps her greatest stroke of genius yet, for her third kill, a girl gives Jaqen his own name, which allows her, Gendry and Hot Pie to escape Harrenhal unharmed.

Conversely, Tywin is known as one of the most ruthless machinators in the realm, which he is, but this season we got to see the other side of the coin — how he got to be that way and why he does the things he does. Tywin’s father Tytos, who was known as the “Toothless Lion,” was “a good man, but a weak man, and nearly destroyed our house and name.” The back story, which we get only second hand in the show, is that of the Reyne-Tarbeck rebellion. When Tywin was just 18, the two houses rebelled because of the perceived vulnerability of the Lannisters. It was Tywin, not Tytos, who went to crush the rebellion, and by the end of the war each of the enemy houses was obliterated and their seats burned. The events were made famous in the song “The Rains of Castamere,” as heard both in the tavern and during the end credits of “Blackwater” (don’t Google it or read YouTube comments to avoid spoilers).

Tywin is a human being, and his discussion of teaching the dyslexic Jaime to read and the way Arya reminds him of Cersei displayed this. But perhaps the greatest example of his humanization are his attempts to protect Arya, who he has no relationship with other than that of servant-master. In “A Man Without Honor,” Tywin told her to say “m’lord” rather than “my lord” if she wants to pass herself off as a commoner. Though he may be a “bad guy” and responsible for countless misdeeds, like every other character in “Game of Thrones,” Tywin is a shade of gray. The man cares about only two things: his family and its name, and he’s doing what he can to protect them in the only way he knows how. If you think about it like that, he and Robb, the “good guy,” really aren’t all that different.

Theon Greyjoy: Kraken or Wolf?

One of the things the show actually did better than the books was display Theon’s inner conflict. First, some back story: six years after Robert overthrew the Targaryens, Theon’s father Balon named himself King of the Iron Islands and rebelled against the Throne. By the time Balon surrendered, his two eldest sons had been killed. As punishment, Theon, his last surviving son, was made a ward of House Stark.

Theon was raised among the Stark children, but he was never one of them. In the finale, he tells Maester Luwin, “I saw [Winterfell for the first time] and I thought ‘of course Ned Stark crushed our rebellion and killed my brothers, we never stood a chance against a man who lives here,’” before asking, “Do you know what it’s like to be told how lucky you are to be someone’s prisoner?”

Theon was one of the first to swear his sword to Robb Stark when he was named King in the North. But when he was sent as an envoy to bring the Iron Islands to Robb’s cause, he was caught between his two families, religions, cultures, and as it turned out, sides in the war. Theon chose his blood family, and it’s clear that decision haunts him every single day.

With the devil that is Dagmer Cleftjaw sitting on his shoulder, Theon does horrible things. He seizes Winterfell, kills Ser Rodrik, and burns two orphans boys, passing them off as Bran and Rickon after they escape. In his conversation with Luwin, the maester tells him, “You’re not the man you’re pretending to be,” to which Theon responds, “You may be right, but I’ve gone too far to pretend to be anything else.”

In the end, both of Theon’s families have turned their backs on him. As for what his future holds as a captive, we’ll just have to wait and see, but I’ll bet it rhymes with bleak.

The Rise and Fall of Tyrion Lannister

Both the second season of “Game of Thrones” and “A Clash of Kings” might be more aptly named “Tyrion Lannister: Bad-freakin-ass.” With his father off fighting the war, Tyrion is sent to King’s Landing to serve as acting Hand of the King, which he announces to Cersei when he walks oh so triumphantly into the chambers of the Small Council (whistling “The Rains of Castamere,” no less). As the only sensible Lannister in the capital, Tyrion’s got a lot on his plate: there’s his psychopathic idiot of a nephew, King Joffrey, first of his name; his overly-paranoid sister; and, of course, all the problems that come from having two such people in charge. Ironically, he gets blamed for many of these problems because he’s different; it’s just easier that way.

There is a line in “A Clash of Kings” that nicely sums up Tyrion in his role as the “good guy” on the “bad team.” Shae asks him what he will do now that he is Hand of the King and Tyrion responds, “Something Cersei will never expect… I’ll do justice.” But the most important thing Tyrion does to save the city is, well, save the city. Without Tyrion’s plan to use wildfire against Stannis’s troops during the Battle of the Blackwater, the city would have surely fallen.

Then there’s the actual battle. As he tells Shae early on, while most others can leave or switch sides, Tyrion wasn’t given a choice. He’s a Lannister. And when Joffrey leaves to “hide behind his mother’s skirts” during the fighting, it is put on Tyrion to take charge. The Imp gives a rousing battle speech before quite literally leading the charge, dwarfism be damned. His reward for all of this, of course, is a sword to the face from one Ser Mandon Moore of the Kingsguard, presumably on Cersei’s orders.

Now, Tyrion is left disfigured, and since his father arrived in King’s Landing, stripped of his title and power. However, Tyrion is still Tyrion; he refuses to run away with Shae because he intends to get his revenge somehow. “In the game of thrones you win or you die,” as Cersei is so keen on saying, and Tyrion ain’t dead yet, so the Queen bitch better look out.

Well, that’s it, another fantastic season of “Game of Thrones” in the books. Worry not, only 299 days until Season Three!

This past Sunday, of course, AMC brought us the return of “Mad Men,” which you probably already knew, since it managed to pull in 3.5 million viewers, a none-too-shabby increase of 21 percent over the series’ previous season premiere. This Sunday, the network has another series coming back, though it’s probably safe to presume that the numbers won’t be nearly as impressive for this one. But, look, if your excuse for not liking “The Killing” is that they didn’t resolve Rosie Larsen’s murder by the end of the season, go peddle your wares somewhere else, because I’m tired of hearing people whine about that. So what if it hasn’t been resolved yet? A show’s allowed to keep its viewers in suspense, isn’t it? If you didn’t like it because you thought it was boring, that’s one thing. If you’re really complaining because the producers promised “a very, very satisfying ending to Season 1” and reneged on that promise, though, I say that you may be well within your rights to be frustrated, but don’t say, “Ugh, they lied, therefore the show sucks,” because that’s just lame.

I do think AMC must be resigned to the return of “The Killing” being slaughtered both by the critics and in the ratings, however, since even though it’s coming back this Sunday night at 8 PM for a two-hour season premiere, the homepage of the network’s press resource center is still busy trumpeting last week’s return of “Mad Men.” For my part, while I do think the series dragged quite a bit in places and reached the point of ridiculousness with how many times Sarah Linden bailed on her planned departure (if I was Ray McDeere, I probably would’ve broken off my engagement to Sarah somewhere around Episode 1.3), I was perpetually gripped whenever Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton were portraying parental grief, and I am steadfast in my disagreement with anyone who says that Episode 1.11 (“Missing”) was an unnecessary detour away from the case, because that may have been my favorite episode since the pilot. If you didn’t like that episode, you probably also watched “Twin Peaks” and complained about how they spent too much time focusing on Audrey Horne when they could’ve been figuring out who killed Laura Palmer…and I’m here to tell you that you can never spend too much time focusing on Audrey Horne.

Quick sidebar: if you didn’t watch “Twin Peaks,” this is Audrey Horne:

This concludes your moment of Sherilyn Fenn zen. We now return to our regularly scheduled column…provided we can all get our concentration back.

Oh, right, now I remember where I was…

“The Killing” isn’t the only series coming back on Sunday. Hell, it’s not even the most anticipated series coming back on Sunday, and I’m pretty sure the ratings will bear that out, because while I’m sure “The Killing” has more fans than just myself, the only real buzz going on at the moment – and, boy, is it a big-ass buzz – is for the return of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Alas, unlike Season 1, where the January TCA tour provided me with the opportunity to participate in roundtable discussions with executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and author George R.R. Martin, I haven’t been able to chat with anyone from the show this time around. I did, however, put together a piece for the Vancouver-based magazine TV Week about the return of the series, and since it’s only available via the print edition of the magazine, I thought I’d share it with you here, in order to help get you as jazzed as I am for Season 2 of the show.

Here goes…

“Assuming we get a second season…” “Unless we get a second season…” “Maybe if we get a second season…”

Given that Game of Thrones, HBO’s epic fantasy / sword & sorcery series, earned itself a sophomore year a mere two days after its very first episode earned a gross audience of 4.2 million viewers, it’s almost quaint to look back on interviews with the cast and creators and see how many times their uncertainty about the future rose to the surface. Less uncertainty, perhaps, than a lack of desire to have their swagger come back to bite them (witness CBC’s Camelot, which came and went in but a single year), but with the benefit of hindsight, their past tentativeness still inspires a smile.

Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the duo entrusted by author George R.R. Martin to adapt his novel series A Song of Fire and Ice into a TV series, copped to their first-season anxiety during a recent UK press blitz in advance of Thrones’ second season.

“I think this time last year I was much more nervous, because you just didn’t know how people were going to react,” said Benioff. “You had the fan base, of course, which is one powerful constituency, but also we had the people who had never read the books, and one of the things we were worried about was, ‘Will anyone who hasn’t read the books care about this, or even understand what the hell’s going on?’”

Weiss seconded his collaborator’s earlier uncertainties. “You don’t know until it’s aired,” he said. “It could be we’re writing it and producing it for a very small group of people, and it could just disappear.”

Now that the pressure’s off, however, Benioff and Weiss are in a far better position to discuss what the second season of Thrones, which premieres on April 1, is all about.

“We’re going to see what happens when a power vacuum opens up and more than one person decides that they’re the best person to fill it,” said Weiss. “That’s probably the simplest way to put the overarching thrust of Season Two.”

During the course of the first episode of Game of Thrones, viewers met Ned Stark (Sean Bean), Lord of Winterfall, and were introduced to his family, including his wife Catelyn (Michelle Fairley), their children Robb (Richard Madden), Sansa (Sophie Turner), Arya (Maisie Williams), Brann (Isaac Hempstead-Wright), and Rickon (Art Parkinson), and, lest we forget, Ned’s bastard son, Jon Snow (Kit Harington). By the end of the season, however, Ned was dead, following the footsteps of his king, Robert of Westeros, played by Mark Addy.

“Their deaths…cast a shadow over Season Two,” said Benioff. “And as Dan says, their absence creates this power vacuum, especially with King Robert: the throne passes to his apparent son, Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), but there are many other claimants to the throne who deny his legitimacy. It’s very much about that: the struggle for power and specifically the struggle for the Iron Throne, and it’s all building toward this massive battle.”

Although Joffrey may begin Season Two comfortably ensconced in King’s Landing, his actions guided in no small part by his mother (Cersei, played by Lena Headey), and her brother, Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), now serving as Hand of the King, Joffrey soon finds himself butting heads with two of his father’s brothers, Renly (Gethin Anthony) and, making his first appearance in the series, Stannis (Stephen Dillane). Both of the Baratheon boys believe they’ve got at least as much right to the throne as their nephew does, but Robb Stark, who’s leading the rebellion in the north, has at least one bargaining chip up his sleeve that the competition doesn’t: Cersei’s brother, Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who’s currently tied up in chains and sitting pretty in Robb’s custody.

Well, okay, maybe Jaime isn’t sitting that pretty. “Being chained up in Belfast was very dirty and wet,” said Coster-Waldau. “I had one night we were shooting a long scene. We shot half the scene when it wasn’t raining, and then they turned around to shoot me, and this torrential downpour started. We wrapped at 5:30 AM, and the last bit was basically a mud bath. The generators were going down every 10 minutes with the water. It was a nightmare.”

Those familiar with Robb’s limited storyline in Martin’s A Clash of Kings, from which much of the material in Season Two is taken, may be surprised to see how much screen time Richard Madden receives in the upcoming episodes.

“Sometimes we love one of George’s characters and feel like we want to spend more time with that character,” said Benioff. “Robb Stark…doesn’t have a huge presence in the second book because none of the chapters are told from his perspective. But we love the character, we loved his storyline, and we wanted to see more of him.”

Viewers will also be seeing more of Tyrion in the new season. Much more, in fact: early reports indicate that he is, for all practical purposes, the predominant character in Season Two. But this should come as no surprise to anyone, really, given that Peter Dinklage’s efforts in the role earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.

“It’s lovely to be recognized, I can’t deny that, but life goes on,” Dinklage told Entertainment Weekly. “I love that we were shooting the show when the awards happened, because I wouldn’t have liked to have gone back home and sit there and stare at it.”

Looking eastward, one of the most anticipated storylines from the Season One finale is finally emerging from its shell. After spending the preceding nine episodes enduring high and lows both physical and emotional, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), widow of warlord Khal Drogo, found her spirits and her political fortunes lifted in the waning moments of Season One’s final episode with the hatching of the three dragon eggs with which she’d been entrusted. Fans of Martin’s novels may have been chomping at the bit to see the scaly little buggers make their way into the world, but they certainly aren’t the only ones: Clarke admitted that spending a season awaiting the dragons’ arrival left her feeling a bit maternal once they finally arrived.

“In Season One, it’s sort of what I was working on the entire way,” Clarke said of the feisty fire-breathers. “Dany has this weird pull towards them, and then in the final scene, when the dragons appear, it was just like I’d given birth. So they’re very much like my children.”

Although Clarke’s new co-stars are accomplished onscreen with the help of CGI, the actress worked with life-size models during rehearsals. “They were correctly weighted, and they allowed me to get an eye line so that it would look right when the dragons you see were added in CGI,” she said. “(But) when were actually filming, they weren’t there at all. That was good, in a way, because it tested my imagination.”

The dragons aren’t the only new additions to Thrones for its second season. In addition to the aforementioned Stannis, other new characters include assassin Jaqen H’gar (Tom Wlaschiha), a sorceress named Melisandre (Carice van Houten), and Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham), a former smuggler who now serves as consigliore to Stannis.

Cunningham, who recently served a stint as President Richard Tate in the BBC series Outcasts, is thrilled to be a part of another epic saga.

“Apart from the scripts which are just brilliant, one thing I love about the show is that because of the ensemble storytelling, your loyalties can sway,” said Cunningham. “You can stay for one or two episodes with a certain character, and decide, ‘Okay, that guy’s a good guy.’ You reckon you have a certain empathy with this or that character. And then they go and do something absolutely f**king horrific and you find yourself going, ‘What was I thinking?’ I love that. It feels real.”

The “reality” of the proceedings has begun to affect the actors off the set as well, with Thrones fans recognizing them for their work on the show. Clarke, for one, left the San Diego Comic-Con feeling like a bonafied rock star. “It was incredible and insane and a complete head wrecker, because you’re there, and people are so in love with the books and so in love with the character, and it’s just joyous to hear and incredibly wonderful,” she said. “But at the same time, it’s a bit overwhelming.”

“The interesting thing is that you meet lots of fans who are, like, ‘Now you’re the person I see in my head,” said Harington. “That’s really bizarre for me, because obviously I read the books, and I had an image of someone in my head, too…and it definitely wasn’t me! But it’s only been a positive thing. The people you meet who love the books have, I think, pretty much across the board been happy with the series.”

With the premiere of Season Two fast approaching, Benioff and Weiss are chomping at the bit for viewers to see what Game of Thrones has to offer this go-round.

“Knowing that, at least for the time being, we have a committed, solid group of people who are excited to see what happens next, is exciting,” said Weiss.

“Last night we watched the first two episodes with the cast, and it just feels like things take off at a much faster rate, at a faster clip this season,” said Benioff. “For us, it’s always been about trying to tell a single large story on the biggest canvas imaginable, with the hope that we’ll be able to get eight seasons to tell the whole thing.”

With that said, however, Weiss underlines that the mindset that carries them through production is their focus on the here and now.

“When we said to HBO going in that ‘we want to take this through to the ending,’ I think we were maybe naïve in some ways, in not knowing exactly what that meant from an experience point of view,” he said. “But we were serious about it. And if we’re lucky enough to be able to keep doing it, that’s what we intend to do.”